While the late great Orson Wells was filming the soon-to-be-butchered The
Magnificent Ambersons and preparing to direct a segment of Journey Into
Fear, he was asked by the RKO studio heads to grab a camera and head down
to Brazil to shoot
some Carnival footage. This act was all part-and-parcel of America's "Good
Neighbor Policy" of the 1940s, which in essence was really more of a "Keep
Nazi Influence The Hell Out Of Hemisphere" initiative (Brazil's government, in
particular, was chock full of Nazi sympathizers, and do I even need to get
started on Argentina?) In case you were suddenly puzzled by this rush to
altruism on the part of the studio system, let us not forget that, due to
ravages of war decimating Europe at the time,
the European movie market was basically non-existent. This is also why Disney
spent much of the '40s making Mexican, Latin-American, and South American themed
films like The Three Caballeros and Saludos Amigos. Opening up
the hand of "friendship" to our South American neighbors sure made good
political and financial sense. This dose of cynicism has been brought to you by
the letter B.

Anyway, Welles was forced to rush completion of both The Magnificent
Ambersons and Journey Into Fear in order to head down to
Brazil. His initial goal was to make
a glorious Technicolor documentary on the subject of Carnival. Welles found
himself enamored with and intrigued by the frenzied, hurricane-like festivities
of Carnival, especially in the music of samba – music which has its roots in the
voodoo history of the country and its people. His aim slowly shifted from
shooting the "superficial, picturesque" Brazil on which most filmmakers and
documentarians had tended to focus, moving towards an attempt to capture
Brazil as it "really"
was.

A few months before Welles's arrival, an amazing historic event had occurred
in Brazil. A small group of Jangadeiros
had endured a near-Homeric ocean journey on a tiny raft, travelling to
Rio in order to reach President Vargas and
demand equal social rights for their people. Their journey and social struggle
had captured the hearts of the Brazilian people, making Jacare and his crew
instant and beloved heroes to the masses. Welles was awed by the Jangadeiros,
their journey, and their impact upon the Brazilian people, and had decided to
shoot a film depicting Jacare's journey and the ensuing cultural phenomenon it
created among the Brazilian people. He entitled the film "Four Men on a Raft",
and started shooting it with the artistry one had come to expect from the
director of Citizen Kane and The Magnificent Ambersons. He
invented new camera techniques to tell his story: he put his actors on platforms
and buried cameras in the sand to achieve extreme low camera angles, used
non-actors in leading roles, several of whom had never seen a movie before, and
even cast a 13-year-old girl as the romantic lead who had wandered onto the set
out of curiosity and was cast later that day.

Meanwhile, all was not well in Tinsletown. The studio heads were
certainly unimpressed with the footage they were receiving from South America. They were expecting something more along
the lines of colorful, sanitized, non-offensive and easily-digestible footage,
not (what they had described as) a bunch of "jigaboos jumping up and down."
Institutionalized racism, we hardly knew thee. At the same time, Welles had been
editing The Magnificent Ambersons via telegrams from
Brazil, and the studio was far from
impressed with that particular footage. The story of what went down with
Ambersons is the stuff of tragic studio legend – what could have been
an even more impressive and compelling film than Citizen Kane was
re-cut and turned into something far from Welles's original
vision– but it also resulted in Welles's Mercury production
company being thrown off of the RKO lot, his career as a director wrecked, and
the plug being pulled from his South American project. Left with a paltry
$10,000, Welles was determined to finish the project, but the footage stayed in
studio vaults for over 40 years.

It's All Trueis a
look back at this harrowing tale. Part documentary, it examines Welles's trip to
South America and his struggles with the studio
during the filmmaking process in fine detail. Featuring archival interview
footage with Welles as well as current interviews with many of his collaborators
and actors during the project, it's a fascinating look at a time in cinematic
history that many had thought lost to legend. Furthermore, the film also
features Welles's Four Men On A Raft footage presented in its entirety.
With no dialogue or subtitles, the footage is featured "as is" with a
Brazilian-themed score in the background. Thankfully, given the context of the
documentary and the presentation of Welles's powerful images, the story is
extremely well delivered and easy to follow. That having been said, the
documentary portion of the feature is easily more compelling than the film
itself, which remains informative and compelling but not overly
memorable. The end result is a reasonably interesting non-fictional
look at an exquisitely-shot, moderately enjoyable short film.

The
DVD

The
Video

It's All True is
delivered in a full-frame, 1.33:1 aspect ratio. It features a variety of footage
shot over the decades on film stock of varying quality. Most of the footage is
in black-and-white, with some Technicolor and televised bits. Overall, the
quality of the transfer is satisfactory. There is little in the way of line
noise, compression artifacts, and pixelation throughout the 80-minute running
time. It's a fine presentation of moderate source material.

The
Audio

The audio is presented in Dolby Digital 2.0, and again is satisfactory if not
overly impressive. Much of the archival footage contains a bit of hiss and
noise, but the newly recorded interview spots sound reasonably clean. The short
film does not have any of its original score, and is instead presented with a
Brazilian score that sounds reasonable and well delivered, with fine range and
delivery.

The
Extras

There are no extras included on this disc.

Final
Thoughts

It's All True is an
entertaining look at lost opportunities in film history. One could only imagine
what Welles could have accomplished, both in South America and in Hollywood in general, had
his career and projects not been cockblocked by interfering studio brass who
wouldn't have known true cinematic artistry even it had crawled out of their
collective heads and smacked them in the jimmy with a walnut. In that regard,
It's All True is a fine documentary. The film, "Four Men On A Raft" is
good for a look but, save for Welles completists, I don't see a lot of replay
value in it. The DVD itself is also a mixed bag: while the presentation is fine
enough, the complete lack of extras makes this a less attractive purchase. I
would say that the disc merits a very strong rental. You'd be surprised
what you end up pining for when the documentary is over.